At Maker Day this month, the Future Makers were on the laser-cutter cutting these geometric shapes out of cardboard to then tessellate into cool 3-dimensional shapes.
Playing with the cardboard and laser-cutter reminded me that we could do with a sign for the workshop door (we also laser-cut some new “we’re in the workshop” signs to help direct people round too).
For our cutting materials we were just using old cardboard boxes from the recycling pile, and the first Workshop sign we cut was from a crisp box.
Once we’d cut that we realised that it would look better (particularly on a wooden door) with a contrasting colour behind the cut-out section. At which point inspiration struck!
The Farnell boxes (given the number of people building things with electronics round here, we have one or two knocking about…) have a colourful wavy pattern design on the side!
We soon had one flattened and ready to feed into the laser-cutter. Andrew pointed out that if we could provide a bit of depth between the text and the background you’d also get a neat parallax effect as you walked past the door. Well, that just needed a couple more frames cutting from the box…
A few minutes of laser-cutting and we were ready for assembly.
Then after a bit of glueing, it was set to be installed.
And now everyone knows where the workshop is!
